Montana Journal, returning home

Last night I said to Lee Perron: When I was in Montana, I was looking for change, because I deserved better than what I was getting. He asked if I went to John Oliver Simon's going away party, and I said no I didn't want to go because he wanted me to, so he could be forgiven. I'm tired of it.

Our last meeting and phone conversation was fine and I was satisfied to let it go at that. I'd already said goodbye to John. Then I tell Lee: if something happens to John on this trip, a worst-case possible scenario for nine months in South America, then I would have to be satisfied with our last conversation.

John's party wasn't necessarily going to make any difference in my life, or of my memories of him. It would be awkward for me to be there.

Lee asks: Is it dangerous where John's going? I tell him South America is always dangerous, there's always an element of risk. We've gotten into a couple potential life-threatening situations in our own travels together. 

Lee is tired and doesn't respond when I say I sound pretty heartless. He says the signs are all there. Time for me to fast again. I guess I should've been a monk, but I'm an atheist.

Lee wanted to know about my friend Lee Evans, and Patrick? who studied with Richard Hugo and James Wright. He wants to know if Patrick had any memorabilia of theirs. Lee's a rare bookseller so he's always hunting for poetic ephemera.

When I first met Patrick, I didn't like his demeanor, or his words. Oil and water. But when he got on stage and told his life story, I was moved to tears. Whether by accident or design, I was transported into his world. 

He was also also noticeably changed toward us afterwards, and was more accessible and approachable. He wants a copy of my poem, Lighting the Electric Fire, that I had read to the group. He says it's unusual to find such sustained maturity that stays with you all through the poem, and continues to resonate long after the poem is over. 

I also give him a copy of my children's poetry collection, This Body is to Ask. (Garbled text.....) I can't breathe. I do all these crazy things and see very little return. I personally get exhausted and have trouble nourishing myself. 

September 12, 1995

Need to find original and decode garbled text.. who is Patrick? I must've been referring to a Montana poet.

• Montana Journal, returning home
• Montana Journal: Helena
• Montana Journal: flying over Mount Diablo enroute ...

Montana Journal: Helena

Journal Entry: Sept. 8, 1995

Helena, Montana. I arrived last night, near 11 PM. It's drizzling still this morning. my wasp sting's finally gone down ,but the itch is driving me mad. l swig lots of Benadryl to keep the swelling down. It's the length of my forearm and is still feverish.

I'm feeling pretty melancholic and am lonely for a mate. In Utah I looked in the mirror and I saw a pretty woman who's beginning to show her age a bit, and I wondered if things were ever going to improve, or am I destined to be alone like this forever. I feel pretty cut off from Sonny and it's certainly deliberate on my part. 

Wednesday afternoon I returned from Bolinas and Sonny came up for a few minutes. I was in an extremely bad mood due to my wasp sting. I don't want him near me when his ex-girlfriend's here. Obviously I'm not taking this reunion well—especially since I know the pattern. In the morning he comes to chat and tells me he wants to reckon up. He still owes me for babysitting but has to pick up his paycheck.

I didn't bother to tell him I'll be gone by afternoon. In fact, I went to the airport to two hours early. How is that for avoidance? Nathan said he wanted to go to Bolinas with me, but his mom kept him until Sunday. I didn't know if Sonny bothered to invite them or not.

My feelings were pretty hurt by Sonny's coldness on the phone. I feel trapped before. I keep thinking what could be more erotic than helping Sonny to raise his son?

I sing, treat me like a friend, treat me like a lover, don't keep treating me the way you do. A song fragment comes unbidden as I'm driving to the airport 

Two and a half hours at Oakland, and then I'll be in Utah. 

At the Montana arts Council meeting, waiting for it to begin. Everyone knows each other, except me, so it makes it difficult to make contact. people come up to me and introduce themselves, but I'm awkward and shy.

I have insomnia  xxxx (garbled text) Will I be able to sleep?

One artist I'm rooming with, Claire, says: I used to call my husband Shotsy now I just want to shoot him. I laugh. I was concerned because several of us had been assigned to this room and I came back only to find two strange men in our room. We seem to be triple booked in Room 310. Party on!

We giggled and comment on how progressive the Montana Arts Council is. But five people in a twin-bed room might be pushing it. Is is the Arts Council trying to save money, or just taking introductions a step further?

There's a whole gaggle of us trying to figure out the keys. The woman at the front desk gave them our keys. It really was funny. I keep laughing about it as I try to fall asleep.

9/8/1995

• Montana Journal, returning home
• Montana Journal: Helena
• Montana Journal: flying over Mount Diablo enroute 

Montana Journal: flying over Mount Diablo enroute to Helena

Flying over Mount Diablo enroute to Salt Lake City and Helena, Montana, for the Montana Arts Council meeting. The Mormon Tabernacle shines in the Oakland Hills, like a crystal palace.

I stock up on chocolate and drink a double latte because my next stop is a long layover in Salt Lake City, the idea no alcohol, no caffeine, or chocolate suddenly has me craving all the necessities at once. A good thing sex isn't banned. I'd have to join the mile-high club, then.

The coastal mountain, Mt. Diablo rises up 4000 feet from sea level, with impressive girth. We're flying over the Oroville Dam, and the Feather River, crossing the Sierras, they are like unsheathed knives slicing the sky. I can see Mono Lake, and Buck's Lake.

There's a fire burning in the Sierras. The canyons to the south are filled with smoke. Looks like King's Canyon. In vain I search for Yosemite. What is that next deep canyon below Oroville?

Mono Lake has numerous ancient, and a few not so ancient, shorelines. They're like stair steps leading down to a jeweled eye. Once it was double its present size, and steamers crossed it. Flocks of birds blotted out the sun. An ancient lake, drained by Los Angeles' water lust. Dying slowly, inch by inch. The eye of the desert is disappearing like the Aral Sea.

The block fault mountains of Nevada's Humboldt Basin give way to the snowy Rockies. And the Great Salt Lake. More ancient shorelines. Bonneville Salt Flats looks like a field of snow. I don't know if I like clouds more from above or below. Magnificent either way. I can see them reflecting in the lake. As above, so below.

We descend to the Great Salt Lake, the plane kicking like a mule in the turbulence, shafts of sunlight, and dark shadows divide the ground into patterns.

I run into fellow CPITS poets Darryl Chinn from Arcata, and Susie Terence from San Francisco, in the terminal. We laugh. We're all three going to be Montana Arts Council artists in residence, how cool is that?

September 7, 1995

• Montana Journal, returning home
• Montana Journal: Helena
• Montana Journal: flying over Mount Diablo enroute 

Bolinas Journal: Labor Day at the crossroads

Labor Day in Bolinas. A parade and drum circle at the crossroads. A chalk circle mandala.

Yesterday, we went rowing in the lagoon. Herman and Verona were content to be bickering passengers. Herman was finding arguments and everything Verona said. As usual I was the one rowing against the tide and wind.

The lagoon and the creek were beautiful. It's good to periodically get a view of the land from the water, it puts everything into perspective. Houses diminish, the streets, the cars, the people become invisible—even the pounding hammers lost their barking.

Today's the big Bolinas Labor Day street party and I'm alone here.

Verona and Herman went back to Novato early and I was too tired to return home to cook dinner. I read until 10PM and nodded off to sleep. I only had a 12-hour day, so I had lots of wild dreams and slept until nine AM. It's unusual for me to sleep 11 hours unless something's wrong.

It's as if the ache has settled in my hips, I don't think it's depression, it's more like physical contact. The outside and inside worlds colliding.

September 4, 1995 Bolinas

Bolinas Journal: Labor Day Weekend

Journal Entry: September 1, 1995 Bolinas

Last night, over for wine, I read some new work to Herman Berlandt who said I have a very distinctive voice and style. He notes the image, voice, language, emotion, intellect, philosophy, social theology, even political, the layers I try to include.

Yesterday on my way to Bolinas, I stopped off at Point Reyes, at the vet's office to see if I could get a prescription for Panalog, and worm medicine from Dr. Fisher. I'd written a note explaining how I had lanced and treated the cat's leg wound, having massaged the puss out from between the muscles. I irrigated it three times a day with HCl. I kept wanting to write it in shorthand but I can't remember the periodic table formula and confuse it with the formula for bleach.

So I knocked on the door though it was 6 PM. A cleaning woman answered, and I handed her the note for Dr. Fisher. Then I said disbelievingly, Debbie? She looked dumb was about to close the door on me, then changed her mind, saying she had changed her name.

She said she was known these days as Nina. Now she had to explain to the two younger women who this Debbie was, yes. And she nearly tried to shut the door on my foot and the past as well.

Debbie Howard, who was a friend from my childhood, and I talk about old home week. We gossip for a good two hours. She and Sarah live in Inverness. Their brother Guy lives in the city and has two kids. One's going to Harvard like his grandfather, ken, and their little sister, Jennifer, too has a couple of kids.

When I got to Bolinas I told Patrick Flynn the stories, and he wondered what the moon was in. We seem to have all these crazy meet-ups while the moon is in Sagittarius according to the Bolinas Hearsay News

My horror-scope reports an adventurous road trip was about to happen, and so it did. All the way to Bolinas. Yes, I'm feeling lighter, Jupiter is the planetary ruler of Sagittarius. Gemini and the moon squares that Virgo symbolic fire. We walk down to the Bolinas Library and dance to grunge music until the cows come home, I can barely make it back up to the top of the Mesa.

_______

With powdered lime I purify the outhouse, dusting it white, the piles of shit slowly climbing towards the toilet lid. Herman says lime is the secret, but the stench greets us anyway. I admire that ongoing whitewashed sculpture.

There's something to be said how we daily contribute our communion. There is beauty even in shit, the layered rosettes of toilet paper bloom against mountains of dung, and the sun warms our legs as we sit and survey the garden of what we will later eat. The bowels letting go of the burden of our eating existence.

Verona goes over her lines as Eleanor of Aquitaine. I listened to her pain, the irony, he who imprisoned her, loved her. But he was meant to rule, so he imprisoned her for waging war against her husband.

Herman in Verona ask about my love life. I have no ready answers to give, for I created the distance between us. Vorona asks if it's better to have meaningless sex with someone you don't love, or live in a sexless country.

Herman says the distance between Sonny and me has more to do with that sexual potential, of what might happen, rather than a lack of desire. Verona tells me if he keeps going back to the ex-girlfriend, and has been picking fights, he's afraid of commitment, so the trouble between us is sexual though there's no sex between us. Therein lies the rub.

What would I do with my life if there was no possibility that I would fail? Herman asks me. And I can't get past that domestic laundry of wanting to be with someone, be it Sonny and Nathan, knowing there'd be times when I'd go crazy.

But if I had the option of having both the domestic and the artistic life, what would I choose? It's more than what I have to give, give up my art even when it doesn't come to me easily? I remain loyal to it.

Herman notes that I'm not producing much these days, but it's strong and succinct. What would happen if I was able to live my dream? Well, the element of surprise always arises, how would I survive? Words like "but" and "how" are open to interpretation.

Atomic Ghost

Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age

John Bradley (Editor)

John Bradley

"The sun was slow in arriving that morning though it was no longer dark, was light enough, and having been born with good eyes, we..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

August 6, 1945: a day when the world was changed. Thirteen thousand people were killed instantly in Hiroshima, and 90 percent of their city was obliterated. Three days later death again rained down, this time at Nagasaki, with radiation poisoning and slow deaths following. The ghosts of these two Japanese cities move like shadows over Americans, who fear for the safety of their children and the survival of the planet. They are also fearful and angry about official lies about the impact of nuclear testing on health and the environment. The poems in this collection speak honestly and elegantly on these points and more, exposing the nuclear fear that has spread into the core of our being. This is poetry as witness, from the conception of nuclear power to its testing ("talking of the danger/as if it were not ourselves/as if we were testing anything else," writes Adrienne Rich) to its inevitable, unbelievable conclusion. In these poems of witness, protest, prayer, and, perhaps, redemption, we hear compelling voices of the human spirit. Important for poetry collections.

Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia

Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Over 100 poets participate in a strong collection of reflections on the nuclear age, providing personal views of atomic politics and human costs. From Adrienne Rich to William Dickey plus a host of lesser-known but equally-talented poets, Atomic Ghost is rich in imagery and assertiveness. -- Midwest Book Review

CONTENTS   


(—now at Google Books with hot links. Click on the word "Contents" and a list with links will pop up. I've posted a few links here as well. For ages, it was almost impossible to find this book. The reason why I posted the list and reviews here was because it had almost disappeared from sight. Great to see its contents available on the internet as it's an important anthology—one I'm proud to be in. Thank you John Bradley for your vision. MH)

The Testimony Of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Florence Anthony

Bringing Zeus To His Knees by Antler [pseud.]

Atomic Ghost by John Balaban

They're Family Men by Ellen Bass

Wine From Bordeaux by Sujata Bhatt

Deeper Than A Dream by Peter Blue Cloud

Sailors Shielding Their Eyes During Atomic Bomb Test, Bikini by John Bradley

Preparing The Nets At New Stuyahok by John Brandi

Wahsah Zeh (war Dance) - As Long As The Grass by Joseph Bruchac

Why I'm In Favor Of A Nuclear Freeze by Christopher Buckley

Eight-legged Colt, Chernobyl by Jerah Chadwick

Prayer For A Future Beyond Ideology And War by Kelly Cherry

Hiroshima Day At The Riviera Coffeeshop by Andrea Collins

To An Unborn Child by Allan Cooper

Bomb by Gregory Corso

Armageddon by William Dickey

Secret Symbols by Hilda Doolittle

Ground Zero by Sharon Lura Edens Doubiago

Why I Think About Hiroshima And Nagasaki by Edward A. Dougherty

The Cocked Finger by Stephen P. Dunn

The Way Light Bends by William Daniel Ehrhart

Another Kimono by Nancy Eimers

The Planet Krypton by Lynn Emanuel

The Fish Dream by John Engels

Mushroom Clouds by John Robert Engman

The Garden Shukkei-en by Carolyn Forche

Radiation by Margaret Ferguson Gibson

Plutonian Ode by Allen Ginsberg

These Are The Word Wounds by Daniela Gioseffi

Harry S Truman Library, Independence, Missouri by Diane Glancy

Shadow by Patricia Goedicke

A Dream Of The Closeness Of Venus by James Roscoe, Jr. Grabill

The Lightning by James Roscoe, Jr. Grabill

What The End Is For (grand Forks, North Dakota) by Jorie Graham

The Half-life Of Sorrow by Roger Greenwald

The Atom Bum by William Henry, Jr. Greenway

Prayer For Continuation by Susan Griffin

Origami by Jay Griswold

The Bath: August 6, 1945 by Kimiko Hahn

Dream Of The Hair-burning Smell by Jana Harris

N by William Heyen

The Message by Jeffrey Hillard

A Prayer For Men And Women by Linda Hogan

Psalm by Peter Huchel

Late Spring In The Nuclear Age by Andrew Hudgins

Country Of Origin by Maureen Hurley

Simultaneously by David Ignatow

Green Light by Rolf Jacobsen

High Altitude Photo Of Hiroshima (circa 1944) by Kent Johnson

Trilobytes by Kent Johnson

Directions For Carrying Explosive Nuclear Wastes Through ... by June Jordan

Questions by Marc Kaminsky

After The Neutron by Terence Keenan

Waiting For The Invasion by Barbara Kingsolver

The Fundamental Project Of Technology by Galway Kinnell

How To Survive Nuclear War by Maxine W. Kumin

When We Say 'hiroshima' by Kurihara Sadako

A Liturgy For Trinity by Barbara La Morticella

The Garden by Dorianne Laux

Gathered At The River by Denise Levertov

The Horse by Philip Levine

Nevada Red Blues by Adrian C. Louis

The Crab-apple Crisis by George Macbeth

In The Shadow Of The Poisoned Wind by Jack Marshall

Terminal Colloquy by Charles Martin

War Resisters' Song by Thomas Mcgrath

Opening Day by David Mckain

Utilities Advertisement In The Wake Of Three Mile Island by Gary Metras

Sputyen Duyvil by Honor Moore

Uranium by Robert Morgan

The Hibakusha's Letter by David Mura

Tulum Saw The Coming by Alan Napier

The Radio Talk This Morning by Lorine Niedecker

Shoulders by Naomi Shihab Nye

When by Sharon Olds

In This Third Year Of Reagan, My 27th Year by Peter Oresick

An Army Of Lovers by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Oppenheimer by Antonia Quintana Pigno

For Harry S Truman In Hell by David Ray

Rose Bay Willow Herb by Judy Ray

For Ethel Rosenberg by Adrienne Cecile Rich

Trying To Talk With A Man by Adrienne Cecile Rich

Black Beauty, A Praise by David William Romtvedt

Eating Dinner At My Sister's by David William Romtvedt

Creation by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Memorandum by Nanao Sakaki

Chernobyl by Mary Jo Salter

Welcome To Hiroshima by Mary Jo Salter

Nuclear Winter by Nicholas Samaras

A Vigil At A Missile Silo by Mark Sanders

Tale Before The End Of The World by Maurya Simon

Strategic Air Command by Gary Snyder

Vapor Trails by Gary Snyder

Sunday Afternoon At Fulham Palace by Elizabeth Spires

At The Bomb Testing Site by William Edgar Stafford

When The Vacation Is Over For Good by Mark Strand

Shadow by Stephanie Strickland

Return To Hiroshima by Lucien Stryk

Silence At The End Of The World by Amber Coverdale Sumrall

Destruction by Takahashi Shinkichi

Explosion by Takahashi Shinkichi

Land Of Little Sticks, 1945 by James Tate

At The Makeshift Aid Station by Toge Sankichi

August 6, 1950 by Toge Sankichi

The Shadow by Toge Sankichi

Hurricane Season by Edwina Trentham

Of Simple Intent by Pamela Marie Uschuk

Early Morning Test Light Over Nevada, 1955 by Robert Vasquez

The Hell Mural: Panel 1 by Ronald W. Wallace

Advice To A Prophet by Richard Wilbur

Strategies For Survival (for The Post-nuclear Children) by Beryle Williams

Tar by Charles Kenneth Williams

High Noon At Los Alamos by Eleanor Wilner

May 28, 1945 by S. L. Wisenberg

The Lamb Of Peace, The Ram Of War by William Witherup

Mervyn Clyde Witherup (b. July 14, 1910 - D. May 12, 1988) by William Witherup

On The Eve Of Our Mutually Assured Destruction by Carolyn D. Wright

Because Of Duties, Zimmer Had Forgotten The Forest by Paul Zimmer

But Bird by Paul Zimmer

-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

A review in The Journal of Environmental Education

Another review: University of Oklahoma.

What's interesting it to see where it was reviewed: the Los Alamos Study Group, United States Air Force Academy in Colorado,

Listed under Los Alamos Study Group Since 1989, the Los Alamos Study Group community—our staff and board, volunteers, interns, and supporters—has consistently provided leadership on nuclear disarmament and related issues in New Mexico. Not infrequently, we also have provided leadership nationally as well. Our work includes research and scholarship (central to all we do), education of decisionmakers, providing an information clearinghouse for journalists, organizing, litigating, and advertising. We place particular emphasis on the education and training of young activists and scholars.
Our careful, reasoned approach has gained us many friends, and built bridges even with people in the nuclear labs and plants. Since September 11, 2001, our work has increasingly placed nuclear weapons in the context of aggression abroad and the militarization of our society at home.

The Study Group is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our board of directors includes both New Mexico and national members, and the work of our staff is supplemented by the contributions of interns and volunteers. We are supported largely by individual donations. We welcome your questions, participation, and support.

War, Literature & the Arts: an Interntational Journal—from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Turning Away From the Blast: Formsof Nuclear Protest Poetry

There's a fleeting reference in Literature of Nuclear Nevada | ONE; and in 2001, someone from Knox College, GA, did a performance piece based on lined from the anthology.

It too is listed under Miami Universities Libraries, but not linked to House on Via Gombito; at the Chicago Public Library, and the National Library of Australia.

It's also available at Cornell. What this suggests to me is that it's on class reading lists. I founded it listed in a history bibliography at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, on a UCLA syllabus for Winter, 2013, and elsewhere.

More on John Bradley

Gundlach-Bundchu reading

A good turnout: 35+ people showed up for the Gundlach-Bundchu Dead Poets reading in the vineyard by the caves. I read William Carlos Williams The Red Wheelbarrow to appreciative chickens roosting on haybales. 

People commented that my reading of the dead poets was very dramatic. I made an impact, or they liked the way I read. A wonderful reader they said. Lila of Readers Books said I performed so well they were going to put me on the main stage tomorrow with Bill Moyers to help raise money for California Poets in the Schools. 

I'm a little miffed, don't they know that I'm the Area Coordinator for CPITS? I feel a bit betrayed by my CPITS protege, Arthur Dawson who should've made sure I was included in the festivities. So much for altruism and reciprocation. I feel like a ghostly apparition.

Apparently my fundraising strategy was so good on Wednesday night that I raised over $50 in nickels and dimes. They said I was such a good emcee, they would love to use me tomorrow, but they'd already asked someone else. Clearly, I have made an impact, too late. 

Thanks a lot, Arthur, for supporting me. Hopefully the networking will pay off next year. They asked me to come early to the reading to help set up. This is good because I keep getting a negative vibe form Luis Kong. He's keeping his distance as if his trouble with CPITS was my fault.

Arthur Dawson, his wife, Jill, and I went to Murphy's Pub for a pint. A surprise to see Don Coffin there playing Irish music. We sang along, and drank and ate ourselves silly. 

I was busy talking to Jill, when Don yelled out Maureen! I thought he was yelling at me for talking during his set. Turns out he wanted me to play the bodhran, only I don't know how to play it, only the spoons.

7/28/1995 

Gundlach-Bundchu Vineyards & Murphy's Pub

Sonoma

ETUDE: DEAD POETS READING

At Gundlach-Bundchu Vineyards

lost etudes resurrected at sunset 

mid-summer over 100 years later 

the viola sings a cello song. 

The pines at the edge of the vineyards
stand at rapt attention. 

The chickens tail up. We eat grapes, 

drink Pinot Noir, admire the bouquet,

the darkness of pine needles
enters into the equation. 

The combs of chickens against oat hay
blood of poppies. The Valley of the Moon
undulate below us. Vineyards in full leaf,
like wild frozen dancers
caught in the gyrations of music.

Pinecones punctuate the grass.
The last blossom of sunlight on her face
as she plays the final note.

We are always students
learning the path of the notes.
In the distance, deep growl
at Sears Point Raceway,
is like a beast in the belly.
We read Neruda, Vallejo, and Tu Fu
at the Dead Poets Society reading.
The fog rolls in, we, in summer dresses
shiver, as Arthur reads an Eskimo poem
about words and magic when the animals
and people were one thing.
Undulating vineyards like frozen waves
as if the ocean forgot to move along,
and was caught poised, midflight
from the farthest Pacific shore.
A horse whinnies, house lights
wink like misplaced stars.
Windows and the suicide of light.
Death again rides the parameters of the field,
the aerial ballet of the bat
We read poems until the light is done,
then we say them from memory,
then, when that fails, we sing them,
as if the very words of the dead
could bring back the sun.
We become silhouettes
The ridges, like the arms of a dream
gather up the songs, a bouquet of words
and we come undone
in the Valley of the Moon,

7/28/1995
Gundlach-Bundchu Vineyards
Sonoma

AT THE SUNSHINE CAFÉ

At the Sunshine Café 

I remember an image 

standing by my old VW 

with Yvonne telling me a story

about how her father felt about love 

and the way that Athena 

sprung full-blown from her father's mind.

I don't know the meta-language

behind what she said, was it in code?

But we swiftly tumbled into the physics 

of teaching children poetry.
I remember the way winter light 

soothed the edges of the hills.

7/26/1995

rev. slightly 17 Nov 2015

Sonoma Valley Poetry Festival, Sunnyside cafe, July -Aug

SOUL INHERITANCE

I threw out my dead mother's 

false teeth today, 

and I realized for the first time  

that I'll never be who I was 

before my parents died 

as if it were something 

I could ever get back to. 

Imagine death saying that. 

I'll get back to you. 

Say it three times.

Say it until it coats the tongue 

with consonants that will bleed 

into the printer while you sleep. 

I dreamt my father brought me stories. 

These words, my soul inheritance, 

my progeny.

13 July 1995

rev. slightly 17 Nov 2015

FIGHT FOR IT

Three indignant sparrows

sing so hard that the bush quakes.

Vultures spend a glad afternoon 

amid new mown fields and hay bales.

Those feathers caught up too soon 

don't bode well for flight, 

and grief is a found object.
My grandmother said, 

a bird flying into your house 

means a death in the family. 

Michael Hannon writes: 

happiness won't come easily. 

You have to fight for it 

every step of the way. 

I am a seasoned fighter.

But the lesson of impermanence 

is merely impermanence.

Every atom weeping into a folded wing 

and 100,000 corpses dance on a pin.

The poet's job is to bring the news 

of the unspeakable into the world.

13 July 1995

rev. slightly 17 Nov 2015

California Poets in the Schools student reading with Maureen Hurley, Barnes & Noble,

2 POEMS from 4Cs workshop, SSU

I am the last unicorn 

asleep in the dream of tomorrow

I would like to be the last star 

on your apron string.

My cold heart in your hands

soft as the baby sleeping, 

bones color of the sky 

with thoughts of the moon 

halfway home 

from the fantasy of the sky.

Four C's workshop 

Sonoma State University

4/28/1995

I am the stillness of deer 

under midnight meadows 

where the moon comes to think.

The grass to me the direction of the wind. 

The trees taught me the speech of grass.

From the stars I learned to memorize 

the constellations 

carried on the backs of children, 

for the sky is my home.

Four C's workshop 

Sonoma State University

4/28/1995

INSIDE MY DREAMS

Inside my dreams,
flowers bloom
in the light of the sun
like a bird flying down
to the dreams of dragons.
Inside my dreams is a field
of rainbow horses
making the spring rush.


April 25, 1995
Higham Family School

A RIFF from "The Man Who Tasted Shapes"

A RIFF on "The Man Who Tasted Shapes"

(a book about synesthesia by neurologist Richard Cytowic)


The blind man who perceives scarlet as the sound of the trumpet hears music when the sun warms his eyelids.

Newton, searched in vain for an algorithm to equate the vibrational frequency of sound with corresponding wavelengths of light. The search for universal correspondences among the senses.

A relativistic universe. Colored hearing, the idea of a correspondence between light and sound. The Theosophy of flight.

All shadows contain complementary colors of object casting shadows, think of Henche's color notes.

Alchemical zeal, transformation between I and cortex on the cellular level. A corollary.

Color consistency is an illusion. Light at sunrise is blue, at sunset it's red. What is the color of daylight from sunrise to sunset?

Decomposing light. Vision is contained a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Color, occupies an even narrower band of light.

polyopia: multiple ghost images, after the image has left the field of vision. What's not there.

palinopsia: afterimage, like seeing the sun, after the sun has set, a persistent kaliedoscope of memory. What's not there.

The act of seeing/tasting/hearing with one's own eyes is therefore an entirely subjective perception.

The idea as light, a word's taste and weight on the tongue, in the ear, in the mind's eye, is both abstract and malleable. Noetic and ineffable.

Agnosia: the not knowing. The inability to recognize things. What's really there. but not acknowledged by the brain.

Then there's the duality of the physics of light, which is simultaneously a wave and a particle. 

If you separate logic and emotion, you understand neither. It's a duality concept. 

I'm of two minds, one is wise beyond knowledge. The other is knowledge, but unwise when it comes to matters of the heart. The blackbird singing.

Conceptual systems. Metaphor based upon physics. What is real?

Try to write an objective definition of love, ontological metaphors rearrange memory, switch metaphors in midstream. Words cannot change reality. 

The physical foundations of a metaphor. The dichotomy of contradictory metaphor is up in the air. The conflict built within Plato: we are all prisoners of our feelings.

Hold fast to the sacred cord of reason, lest we be lost. Make that sacred chord. The schism between reason and emotion, you ask. Aristotle stated emotions carry their own form of logic, and that synesthesia is a subtractive experience. But it's really an additive experience. You get multiple input.

The logic of emotion is beyond our control. Valence, salience. What is most important? The sum total or what is most prominent? Collective or ego? Jamais vu, or déjà vu? What is not seen, or what is familiar? Choose.

Qualia: sub-seption, internal and subjective below our awareness, call it subconscious knowledge. What is simultaneously known and not known.

The transition between one state and another, from maximum to minimum, is the dimensionalist existence of a Cartesian point. Cogito ergo sum.

Then the idea that Plato's dichotomy between reason and emotion reenacted. 

Just don't approach the koan with intellect. One hand clapping, if a tree falls in the forest....

April 19 or 20, 1995

slightly rev. 16 Nov, 2015

But, though this piece is slightly revised for clarity's sake, such as it is, some of this prose piece, as did much of my writing during 1995, found its way into my long prose poem Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year (I posted it as a Jan., 1995 entry, but I was still working on it in April, and beyond). I was fixated on physics and synaesthesia. And the vagaries of the mind, love, the human heart. The poem grew to 36 entries. And then some. I couldn't stop writing about it.